He Helped Us
by Brennoothfan4ever
Summary: Brennan and Booth aren't Sweets's only patients. This is a look into just one case where Sweets uses his understanding of people to help solve a mystery.


**He helped us**.

"Dr. Sweets will see you now." The nurse said mechanically to us. I glared at her as I rose from my seat. James followed and gripped his hand in mine. As we passed through to doorway from the waiting area the dull ache in the back of my head pulsed. I knew what it was from and I had a feeling that there would be more crying before the day was over.

"Carol?" James whispered softly next to me. Turning, I saw the man that I fell in love with and suddenly I was transported back to sophomore year. Captain of the football team and star quarter back, James Moore, had asked _me _out on a date. Me, the lowly third year who was almost considered an outcast by almost everyone except for the few members of my dance team. We'd gotten married straight out of high school after I found out I was pregnant with Kaitlynn. Most people were against it, said that we would never last, but we proved them wrong. Almost eighteen years of happy marriage... almost.

"Carol?" James's voice pulled me back, along with all of the hurt. I wasn't even inside the room yet and I was already blinded by the tears that were falling down my cheeks.

James stopped walking and pulled me in for a hug. I felt his strong arms around my shoulders and it helped a lot. It helped to know that he was suffering just as much as I was. Kaitlynn was his daughter too.

I wasn't outright sobbing, I had already done that, but enough tears were falling to stain the corner of his shirt a different color. He pulled my face up with his finger and brushed away some of the traitorous drops on my face.

"We'll get through this. The worst part passed a long time ago. It's time to move on." His voice was soft and reassuring. Supportive. Everything I needed.

When I didn't move he did it for me. Taking my hand he pulled me into the little room where the doctor was waiting. Inside it was warm and sunny, the windows to the right were open to let in as much light as possible.

I hated it.

It reminded me of what I used to be like. It was almost nostalgic... six months could do a lot to a person.

"Welcome Mr. Moore, please have a seat." He nodded to me. "Mrs. Moore." He said in respect.

From the second he had fallen into my line of vision I hated him. I hated him, plain and simple. He looked even younger than Kaitlynn had been... and he was supposed to help us? No way.

James pulled on my hand and I sat down next to him on the couch. He took the letter that I had been holding, I felt the sharp edges and creases under my fingers. All of the places where the corners were frayed and the tape scraped the skin on my hands reminded me of why it was in such a disgusting state; torn to pieces several times but put lovingly back together after each outburst.

My eyes followed the hand that moved slowly between the two men. The doctor in turn reached out and took it. We were all silent, save for the crinkling of the paper as he unfolded it with the utmost care. It was quiet as he read to himself. I read along with him, since I knew it by heart.

_Mom and Dad,_

_I know that it's probably not the best thing to have you read this but I want you to understand why I did what I did. By the time you read this I know I'll be dead and I know that I will sadden you greatly. I don't mind if you cry but please please please don't go crazy! Mom, I know you had big dreams for me but I've done all that I wanted to do in my lifetime. Dad, I know that you told all of those stories about what I could do with my future because you wanted to best for me... but I didn't want any of that. First off please let me say that I am NOT depressed. Never have been, and I know that's probably what you're thinking was wrong with me but DON'T. I can't tell you how happy I've been for the last few years, I got everything I ever wanted and more._

_What I decided on was that I was happy enough. My life was content enough and I felt that I've done enough to consider my time finished. Nothing you did influenced my decision. It was all on my own. I wasn't bullied, I have plenty of friends (which you know off because they practically lived in my room) :D . Oh. Seriously Dad? *mega eye roll* I can't even believe you would EVER consider a boy to be the reason why I'm gone! BTW (that means 'by-the-way since I know you oldies won't understand it XD love you anyway!) please don't say that I "committed suicide'! Only depressed people do that, and they do it by blowing their brains out or slitting their wrists. Please tell people that I'm 'gone'. It would make them feel better it they didn't know._

_I've alreay prepared them... in a way. kinda... sorta. See, after the second time I fainted at school I told everyone that I had a disease that would make my health slowly disintegrate. Mom please don't get mad, I mean, it _IS_ kinda true isn't it? I do have P.O.T.S. so I wasn't lying. Per say. Anyway, they knew my health was going to fail, and it kinda was... But I don't think they knew how "fast" it was going to kill me. _

_I know you guys are probably madder than hell at me right now but I have a few requests for you. Firstly I would like you to ask everyone to wear white to the funeral. Weird huh? I know! But it's what I want. I think it'll help if they know they're wearing my favorite color. And second (sorry, this might cost you guys a little bit of money but you can use what I've saved up. Um, I think I have at least a hundred and twenty. You'll have to check and see. All of my money is in my wallet... it's under all of the crap at the bottom of my purse. Mom, you know what it looks like so I guess that its up to you) anyway I want you to buy a bunch of necklaces with vials and put some of my ashes in each one. ;) tell everyone that I wanted to see the world and that they should carry me around with them everywhere. Give them to everybody that comes to the funeral, especially my friends and to our family members._

_Please know that I have made this decision and I was happy when I made it. I want you to know that I didn't cry. Not one single tear as I went to sleep. Not even when I wrote this. Not a single one... Oh, and one final thing. I want you to know that I love you guys. I love you with everything I am._

_From your loving daughter,_

_Kay_

* * *

My Kay.

My Kay had written that to me and her father.

My Kay had been the person who had 'gone' from our lives.

My Kay was everything to me... and she always will be.

I watched Dr. Sweets's face ripple with puzzlement. He was rereading the letter.

James squeezed my hand and started rubbing circles on my palm absentmindedly. It was then I remembered something. Kay was OUR Kay. Not just mine. She had been ours, the product of the love between James and I. She was ours.

I remembered every little itty bitty minute of Kay. All of her...

Our Kay had been popular, with many friends but never had a particular interest in boys. Never once gave any of them the time of day, but it was never her fault. She didn't do it on purpose, her mind had just been to full of 'friends' to think of them as anything other than that.

Our Kay had triumphed where I had failed. She had decided early on in life that she wanted to be something, and that something she decided on was to be a musician. The memory of her in the music store that day was prominent in my mind. She was ten years old. As serious as could be while she was walking up and down the isle ways looking at all of the different instruments. I was sitting at the front of the store waiting for her to make a decision. After at least a half an hour she came back to me empty handed.

"Where's your instrument Kaitlynn?" I had asked. I remember that pout she had thrown at the floor.

"Its up at the front." She murmured. She had turned around then, walking all the way back to the counter with her head down and her chin to her collar bone. I followed, smiling, but utterly confused.

When we reached the front I came to understand why she was acting so sourly. The instrument she had chosen was bigger than she was. A cello she said it was called. It took quite a while but I was finally convinced (after much debate from the store owner _and _Kay) that it was spelled cello but pronounced 'chello'. When we left I had been in a bad mood. But my daughter wasn't, choosing to ignore my broodiness she went on to tell me the history of the violincello and its Italian start.

She had been so happy over the years, being able to play music. Until she started taking lessons and then every once in a while she would come home with tears in her eyes because she was frustrated at not being able to play a certain song the right way. But other than that she was so happy. I remember she would sit for hours and hours on the weekends just playing random songs. I asked her one day 'Kay what are you playing?' and she just looked at me and shook her head. 'My fingers just move Mom. I never know what I'm going to play next.' She told me.

After many years I started to notice a pattern. Whenever something happened she would always go to her music, it even transferred over to other things too. It didn't even have to be a bad thing, it was just... everything. Everything connected to music for her. At one point I sat back and thought. 'When was the last time I noticed my daughter without headphones in her ears?' or 'When did she start carrying her Ipod everywhere?'. She would write down the lyrics of songs she'd heard but didn't know on little scraps of paper so she could look them up on youtube later that day. I had found one just this morning under the keyboard of the computer. 'Running up that hill' it had said. It was all I could do to not cry as I found myself listening to a song by a band named Placebo. Everything Kay did, it was for that.

She was determined, but seemed lazy because she never did anything without a reason or unless she wanted to. She was loyal, sticking by her friends even when she was angry at them. Only one time did she really let one go and it had made her suffer greatly. The betrayal she had felt reflected in the music she played for the weeks after that. It was all sad songs.

Kay was everything I wanted to be when I was younger, and I was so happy that she was my daughter. _I,_ and most importantly, _we _were devistated when she left us. It was something that just last month I couldn't even fathom recovering from, but James insisted that Dr. Sweets could help us. I really wanted to believe him.

* * *

Dr. Sweets finally put down the blasted letter and looked thoughtfully between the two of us. We'd been sitting in silence for almost ten minutes and the kid still hadn't said anything. Then finally he opened his mouth and words spilled out.

"Mr. Moore how would you describe your daughter?"

I guess that question caught James off guard because he was startled for a moment. He swallowed and took a deep breath.

"Well," he started. I guess he didn't know what to say. "She was beautiful. The most beautiful girl a father could have, and she made me extremely proud." Clearing his throat he continued. "Kay was a very determined girl, got good grades; made the honor roll, too. She had lots of friends, so many in fact that Carol and I had trouble keeping track of which ones where which. But most of all she was happy."

Dr. Sweets acknowledged my husbands answer with a nod. "Did she have anything that she especially loved?" He asked in return.

This floored my husband even more than the previous question, the shock ever growing on his handsome face. "Well, now that you mention it, yes she did. Kay really loved music and animals. We have three cats and a dog and Kay treated them like her own children, even calling them her 'babies'."

The twelve year old went back to thinking. A few moments passed which gave me enough time to realize that James had noticed something about Kay that I never even thought about. The fact that he had noticed that our daughter loved animals that much was something entirely new to me. Don't get me wrong, I knew that my daughter loved animals but I never thought much about the little pet names she called them.

All of a sudden a 'hmf' sound came from across from me. Leaning forwards in his chair Dr. Sweets laced his fingers together and rested his elbows on his knees and his chin on his knuckles.

"There's something interesting about why your daughter called her pets her hypothetical children."

"What is it?" I demanded. If he was finally starting to get somewhere then I wanted to know right away.

Though he seemed surprised that I had spoken, our psychologist went on with his explanation. "Because your daughter called her pets her children it leads me to believe that she was searching for a surrogate family-"

"But _we're_ her family!" I argued. My daughter had no reason to search for a family if she already had one that loved her.

The doctor shook his head. "That's not exactly what I meant when I said that Mrs. Moore. What I was going to say was that your daughter was substituting real children with things she loved."

This made absolutely no sense to me and I guess he understood that that's what my silence meant because he continued.

"Humans go through many stages in their lives, right?" We nodded our heads in agreement. "Humans have a natural yearning for love and affection as well as a built in instinct to continue on to each stage in their development. Well, your daughter... how should I put this; your daughter basically adopted her pets and her brain substituted them for her would be children which she would have mothered had she not decided to leave the physical world behind."

His explaination was starting to get clearer but it was still a little foggy to me.

"Your daughter's brain was basically tricked into thinking that it had heirs and therefore she could go on without having any regrets. That's basically my point that I was trying to make." He leaned back into his chair and folded his hands in his lap.

Furious at his interpretation I lashed out. "If she wanted heirs why didn't she just have real children?" I snapped at him.

Just as calmly as before, as if I had never shouted at him in the first place, he answered. "Mrs. Moore, you know how one person can mature faster than another person?"

Now _that_ I could understand. "Yes."

"Well, think about it this way; your daughter matured through the stages of life faster than the normal person. I see it quite often with my more elderly patients, they understand that they don't have a lot of time left and therefore experience a sort of 'peace' I would say. They often come to terms with their fate and then make arrangements for after they're gone." He pointed to the letter. "Like this for example. Only, the legal form of a letter like this would be called a will."

It was starting to make sense now. "So you mean to tell me that my daughter, even though she was only eighteen, was thinking like someone who was eighty?"

He nodded. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying."Shifting the letter around so that James and I could read it he held his finger under a certain phrase. "Here, in this line, your daughter says that she felt it was her time to go. This is what some of my older patients feel. They talk to me about their lives sometimes. Often filled with great accomplishments; but my one patient, who is no longer with us, completed his last goal just weeks before he died. He told me that he wanted to get it done before he passed on."

"So you're saying that our daughter completed everything she ever wanted to do in her life?" James asked him. He sounded confused, which was something that didn't often happen to my husband. "What did she want to accomplish?"

Dr. Sweets shook his head. "I'm afraid that your daughter is the only one who knows the answer to that Mr. Moore."

He let my husband and I absorb that information into our minds. From the way that I interpreted it my daughter left us because she was happy with the things that she had done. She had a family that loved her, that would miss her. Even if they_ were _just her pets and my husband and I.

I was still angry at her leaving, but I was starting to come to terms with the outcome. If I were in her shoes I knew for a fact that I would never die on my family when I still had things that I wanted to do with my life.

The rustling of the paper note brought me back from my internal discoveries. Dr. Sweets had picked up the letter again, a frown on his face. I watched as his eyes moved back and forth as he reread the words for the third time.

"Mrs. Moore?" He asked finally.

"Yes?" The hatred that I had automatically felt towards him the first time I lied eyes on him was starting to fade. James was right when he forced me to come here. This was helping.

"What is your daughter talking about when she says 'P.O.T.S.'?"

"That's the disease that she was diagnosed with." I explained. I could tell that my voice was shallow and tired but I couldn't help it. Whenever someone mentioned that it made me think of all of the things that Kay couldn't do after she was diagnosed. "The full name is Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. Kay was diagnosed with in when she was a freshman. It isn't a life threatening disease on its own but it can kill a person anyways."

Now the doctor was confused. "How so?" He asked.

James intertwined our fingers again and I took a deep breath before I continued. "P.O.T.S. is a disease that causes disruption in blood flow and a whole bunch of other things. Basically the veins in her legs didn't contract when they were supposed to and when Kay would go to stand up not enough blood would be pushed to her brain and she would black out sometimes."

"So she was basically having mini strokes?" Sweets summarized.

"Basically." I said. "But not exactly. There's a lot more to it than that."

The wrinkles above his forehead appeared again. "And how did your daughter feel about this?"

"Kay was absolutely fine with it. She just couldn't do any sports not that she did them anyway and she had to take medicine for it, but other than that she was perfectly fine."

Dr. Sweets looked me in the eyes. "Mrs. Moore what did you mean when you said it wasn't fatal but it could kill anyways."

Now came the hard part. This was always difficult for me to talk about, so I turned to James and he took over.

After clearing his throat my husband took over for me. "We had a scare." He started the story like we always did. "About two years before Kay died she was driving home from a concert she had played for. We don't know if she moved to fast or if she just had a random shock but ultimately she blacked out and crashed the car."

"Was she injured?" The doctor asked in a quiet voice.

"Not seriously. Thank god, but she did have a concussion." James finished the story and was silent for a few moments. "Do you think Kay left us because of this?" He added.

Sweets shook his head and I let out a breath I didn't know I had been holding. "No, I don't think this has anything to do with her death. One thing though; after your daughter was diagnosed did she tell her friends?"

James continued on for us in my stead. "Yes, as a matter of fact after she told them they all looked out for her as best as they could. Always having at least one person with her to make sure she didn't black out. They took really good care of her. They were devastated when it happened."

"That's why I think she used this as a scapegoat." Dr. Sweets explained. "She used her disease, which none of her friends where familiar with, to cover up her death. I think she was trying to make their grief hurt less."

Once again something the young doctor said to me didn't make any sense at all. "What do you mean by that?" I asked sourly.

"Let me put it to you this way Mrs. Moore. Your daughter may have decided to have you tell her friends her disease killed her because she wanted them to feel that they protected her as long as they could. Kay believed that telling her friends she died by something other than what they thought would kill her would hurt them. She may have thought that after all of the effort put in by her friends that they would be angry if they found out that she had taken her own life instead of dying by what they thought she would. She was just trying to protect them."

My heart gave a lurch. My precious daughter had been thinking about the well being of her friends even as she planned everything out. It was horrible of me to feel happy at that moment but I just couldn't help it. Kay had been thinking of everyone as she thought things through. She made plans, she made wishes, she did lots of things but most of all I was so happy that our Kay had still been ours.

I would have been even more devastated had she been a self centered person who was just trying to blame her own death on something other than what it was. She was trying to save her friends from hurting to much. I understood it now. I understood it all.

For the first time in months (months that I had been searching through her things, asking friends, and even just crying over her ashes in my own vial) I felt that I understood my daughter and her choices. My hand slithered up to my neck, my fingers shaking as they grasped the precious glass encasing the last remaining part of my daughter. The tears started to fall again; looking over to James I saw that he understood too. His eyes were watery, though none actually spilled over. He smiled sadly at me to pass on a silent message that he was all right.

I rose from my seat, James followed my lead. "Thank you Dr. Sweets." I rounded the little coffee table and engulfed the young man in a hug. "Thank you for helping us." I said as I released my hold on him. As I stepped aside James held out his hand and gripped the doctor's slender fingers firmly.

"Yes. Thank you doctor, you really showed us how to find some closure in all of this mess."

Sweets seemed extremely surprised because his large brown eyes stared back at us like a fawn in the headlights of a car. He seemed to be thinking of what to say for a few moments but then stuttered out a few words. "T-thanks, but I didn't do anything."

"Oh yes you did. You showed us that our daughter still loved us. You have no idea what that means to us after what happened. It helped more than you know." I told him.

He stared blankly at me for another few moments, then a furious blush worked its way up his face. "You're welcome."

* * *

**Thank you for reading. This was a oneshot so I'm not going to continue it, but it was a nice story right? I've always wondered what Sweets's other patients are like, and since they never show them I had to imagine my own. Please review. After working so hard on these it makes my day when people tell me to continue working. :)**


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